the Leader - April 13, 2007

And Still No Tunnel

I had the opportunity to sit with Kevin Falcon in May 2006 to discuss alternatives to the proposed South Fraser Perimeter Road, and in that meeting, Falcon was insistent that the costs for a tunnel through the North Delta leg were prohibitive, pegging them at $600 million without a scrap of evidence.

We discussed at length a number of factors, for which he had prepared positive spin answers to dissuade us from our purpose.

Not only did his answers fail to sway us, now we see that we were on the right track.

Falcon is already 67 per cent through his “extraordinary” contingency with expropriation costs alone.

Clearly, there are some errors in their planning.

Given Falcon’s comments in last Friday’s article, “South Fraser Perimeter Road costs now at $1 billion,” that expropriation of 200 North Delta Homes is costing $400 million.

It is safe to say that with our original tunnel proposal, which required no expropriations for a bargain price of $0, $400 million would have been well invested in building a tunnel under North Delta.